PS2 and First Thoughts on my HP House Blanket

I spent yesterday knitting up some test swatches for a new project looming on the horizon. I'm sure you have noticed that since the release of Mason Dixon Knitting there have been quite a few log cabin blankets popping up throughout blog land. Well, before Mason Dixon came out Sally Melville's Color book was out(I think Color came out first anyway--I had the Color one before I bought MDK). I bought it and the only reason I did was for the log cabin pattern in it. As soon as I saw it the first thing I thought of was Harry Potter. I thought about making log cabin squares using the for house colors then putting them together into an afghan.

I have never jumped into the realm of changing a pattern to suit my personal vision, so there were a couple obstacles in the way. How much yarn to order? Would the squares looked the way I envisioned them made with only two colors? Would the blanket look the way I envisioned it when all the squares where put together?

Luckily I had two balls left from my Harry Potter Ravenclaw scarf and I decided to use them to work up some practice squares. The reason behind that is two fold: (1) to see how many squares you can get from two balls(helping with the amount of yarn question) and (2) to see I smaller layout so I could get an idea of the big picture.

Here is the result of yesterday's work(I still have more yarn left--hopefully enough for at least two more squares):


They do look the way I thought they would so I'm thrilled with that. There may be a couple of problems when it comes time to assemble the blanket(but more on that in a later post). They are about 8 inches square and they actually work up pretty quickly once you get the hang of the pattern.

Just for my own personal reference, here are the sources of inspiration:
Pattern: Book 3: Color Sally Melville
I did take some liberties with the square; judging by her directions I think mine may be worked backwards somehow.

Layouts: Make a Quilt in a Day Log Cabin Pattern Eleanor Burns
It occurred to me when I started to seriously think about doing this that there must be tons of quilting books on Log Cabin designs. I liked this one because it has pages and pages of layouts for log cabin quilts ranging from 9 blocks to 36 blocks. I really think that quilting books are an untapped source of knitty inspiration--although after MDK and Color I think the secret may be out.

Colors: Atypically Knit--Azkaban Scarf

I decided to use Encore, because it's washable and holds up well:
Gryffindor - burnt sienna (#0999) and cognac (#175)
Book Ravenclaw - dark country blue (#0555) and cognac (#175)
Hufflepuff - black (#0217) and butternut (#1014)
Slytherin - hunter (#0204) and gray (#194)**

**I had to change the gray in Slytherin from atypically's first choice of #130 as it doesn't seem to be available anymore, plus I like the #194 better.

I'm sticking to book colors to so my Ravenclaw squares(above) won't work for the actual afghan(plus they are the "pre-Azkaban" colors). If I can get 4 from my leftovers I may put them together for a pillow top. The squares I am practicing with do fit in well with the February/March Project Spectrum colors though :)

If you read all the way to here, good for you. This post was mostly a place for me to put my thoughts at this beginning stage. Now I just need to wait patiently for the yarn to arrive at the shop :)

Future posts on the blanket forthcoming(after the yarn arrives)
Also, some swatching on a Sirius Black inspired scarf coming soon.